Authorship and Aggregate Rating in SERPS
-
I've setup authorship and aggregate rating information for our website. It all checks in the Structured Data Testing Tool, but the results in the SERPs have been on then off. At first my authorship image showed on all articles were the markup existed, then suddenly it went away. Then more recently, the aggregate rating information displayed on all pages were the markup existed, then again, it suddenly disappeared.
I'm curious if anyone knows if the disappearance of these things are the result of manual action from Google or simply because the algorithm gathering more information that would cause the items to stop showing for one reason or another? In both cases the markup didn't change previous to the results disappearing. This leads me to believe the change in the SERPs wasn't a result of the markup, but rather something on Google's side.
-
Hi Gianluca,
If you can describe what types of schema you have seen to be affected by authority, as in my experience setting up fresh brand new sites with authorship seemed to have authorship show really fast?
I did see most if not all the review sites with aggregate reviews in their snippets drop a while back (earlier than August for my case)
-
When it comes to Authorship and Schema (or Structured Data) visualization in SERPs as rich snippet, a big part seems to be played by the authority of the domain.
What does this mean?
That even though the Structured Data Testing Tool is saying to you that everything is fine, if your domain is not authoritative, probably Google won't render any rich snippet.
This possibly is a way for trying fighting the "rich snippet spam" and in the second half of August I saw that many sites, which had aggregate reviews in their snippets, lost them.
Be aware that not having rich snippets doesn't mean Google is not reading the structured data information in your site, and use it for better understanding its content.
-
While I haven't tested this, I haven't heard that you can't have schema and authorship on the same page. Google has been pushing people to do both. So, I can't imagine that they would do something like that. As for authorship and publishership, they are two sides of the same coin and both are supposed to be used, though I think publisher is supposed to be used on the homepage. Even still, I seriously doubt that using one would block the other.
-
From what I have gathered here and on other forums is it's more of an automated algorithm that Google is experimenting with right now, which is why the inconsistencies in displaying these items.
With that, I'm wondering if anyone has tested and found what could be an influence triggering the information to disappear - assuming that it is all setup correctly and verified via the Structured Data Tool. I saw a post were someone said you can't have both Authorship and schema data on the same page. Another said that rel="publisher" on the same page as Authorship could also block the Authorship from showing. Yet another said Authorship authority was why. These seem like guesses more than anything, so I'm curious if anyone had some test data that could back up these claims or possibly shed some light on other factors that could be potentially be affecting one or possibly both items?
-
If the Structured Data Tool shows that your pages are set up properly, I wouldn't worry about it. Google plays around with their algorithm and I've seen authorship images show up next to my SERP listings on and off. I attribute this to Google tinkering, and possibly my personalized search having something to do with it.
I've ran searches for my own content while logged into my Google profile and gotten different authorship results than when running a de-personalized search.
-
I agree with Vadim. There's constant fluctuation in the authorship and the schema stuff. Google's still trying to figure all that out. The only manual potentially manual action I've seen Google take related to authorship is if the author's image isn't a faceshot.
Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com -
I've seen this personally happen to me, and my guess it is something on Google's side as they are trying to fiddle around with what information best to display from your site to SERPs. I'd love to hear others experience with this as well.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
My Website's Home Page is Missing on Google SERP
Hi All, I have a WordPress website which has about 10-12 pages in total. When I search for the brand name on Google Search, the home page URL isn't appearing on the result pages while the rest of the pages are appearing. There're no issues with the canonicalization or meta titles/descriptions as such. What could possibly the reason behind this aberration? Looking forward to your advice! Cheers
Technical SEO | | ugorayan0 -
Sitemap.gz is being indexed and is showing up in SERP instead of actual pages.
Sitemap.gz is being indexed and is showing up in SERP instead of actual pages. I recently uploaded my sitemap file - https://psglearning.com/sitemapcustom/sitemap-index.xml - via Search Console. The only record within the XML file is sitemaps.gz. When I searched for some content on my site - here is the search https://goo.gl/mqxBeq - I was shown the following search result, indicating that our GZ file is getting indexed instead of our pages. http://www.psglearning.com/catalog 1 http://www.psglearning.com ...www.psglearning.com/sitemapcustom/sitemap.gz... 1 https://www.psglearning.com/catalog/productdetails/9781284059656/ 1 https://www.psglearning.com/catalog/productdetails/9781284060454/ 1 ... My sitemap is listed at https://psglearning.com/sitemapcustom/sitemap-index.xml inside the sitemap the only reference is to sitemap.gz. Should we remove the link the the sitemap.gz within the xml file and just serve the actual page paths? <sitemapindex< span=""> xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"></sitemapindex<><sitemap></sitemap>https://www.psglearning.com/sitemapcustom/sitemap.gz<lastmod></lastmod>2017-06-12T09:41-04:00
Technical SEO | | pdowling0 -
Basic SERP report does really gives me useful information?
Hi There! Ive seen so many times in the Basic SERP report, that pages/domains with low values are at the TOP of the SERP report, and i dont really understand that why can this be? I also have the same low values but i cant move higher for a keyword and i thought there is no question, i should improve my content/site, etc... But still dont understand why i see so many times that other domain/pages with lower values are at the top? On the attached screenshot, i am in the 12th position... Thx E. serp_report.jpg
Technical SEO | | Neckermann0 -
301 redirect to WWW on a 2 year old website with good SERPs and organic traffic?
Hi everyone, Recently someone pointed out that my website can be accessed in both ways i.e. by typing www.example.com or example.com. He further added that Google might identify this as duplicate content and penalize my website. So now I'm thinking about 301 redirection from non WWW to WWW using htaccess method. But my website is 2 year old now and I'm getting some decent traffic from Google. Will this redirection have an adverse effect on my rankings? Is there any other way to resolve this issue? I don’t want to lose my current rankings or organic traffic. Any help would be very much appreciated. P.S. Currently Google index my website pages with WWW.
Technical SEO | | nicksharma040 -
Will Google index a site with white text? Will it give it bad ratings?
Will google not rank a site bc pretty much all the copy is white (and the background is all white)? Here's the site in question: https://www.dropbox.com/s/6w24f6h5p0zaxhg/Garrison_PLAY.vs2-static.pdf https://www.dropbox.com/sh/fwudppvwy2khpau/t43NozpG3E/Garrison_PLAY.vs3.jpg thanks--if you need me to clarify more let me know TM Humphries LocalSearched.com
Technical SEO | | CloudGuys0 -
Google: site gone from SERPs, back in 1 day, then gone again?
Last December we fumbled our 404 error page with a misconfigured server and broken links on the page. Needless to say, our site dropped into an abyss - for 4 months. Yesterday we appeared again in our regular placement (actually stronger placement). Our site has been around since 09-Jan-1999 and has been a highly regarded site with good link structure and solid content for engineers. Then today we're gone again. Yesterday morning we had 125,000 pages indexed with Google which grew to 187,000 by late afternoon. Then this morning we're nowhere to be found and only 21,800 pages are now indexed. We've been working with Bruce Clay Inc through an SEO site audit doing several updates to improve through good seo practices. We haven't made any changes to the site since last Friday, April 13th (maybe the unlucky number has something to do with it....) Any ideas, insight, suggestions???? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Prospector-Plastics1 -
Getting images indexed in the SERPS
Good Afternoon form 13 degrees C totally Sunny Wetherby UK 🙂 Am i right in thinking that the only way to get images appearing like this in your serps: http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc53/zymurgy_bucket/innovia-merchant-immages-serpscopy.jpg is to be hooked up to Google Merchant? Which kind of means if the sight your working on has no images then this type of enhancement is out of bounds? Thanks in advance, David
Technical SEO | | Nightwing0 -
Google Indexed URLs for Terms Have Changed Causing Huge SERP Drop
We haven't made any significant changes to our website, however the pages that google has indexed for our critical keywords have changed to pages that have caused our SERP to drop dramatically for those pages. In some cases, the changes make no sense at all. For example, one of our terms that used to be indexed to our homepage is now indexed to a dead category page that has nothing on it. One of our biggest terms, where we were 9th, changed and is now indexed to our FAQ. As a result, we now rank 44th. This is having a MAJOR impact on our business so any help on why this sudden change happened and what we can do to combat it is greatly appreciated.
Technical SEO | | EvergladesDirect0